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@@ -20,14 +20,22 @@ Last night on the deck, I finally went online in search of answers and found it.
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Here are the berries and flowers:
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+<div style={{display: 'flex', justifyContent:'center', alignItems:'center', fontSize:'small', marginBottom:'20px'}}>Pyracantha in spring and fall</div>
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There are some plants with shrimp-like appearance and this isn't the only plant that smells like shrimp. The many-flowered Spiraea prunifolia[^3] and the Pyrus calleryana[^4] also smell a bit shrimp'y. The Pyrus calleryana is the parent family of the Bradford pear which have been planted widely and are now considered an invasive species. It is now illegal to grow, buy, or sell in many states[^5].
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-We had a good chunk of our yard torn up by the equipment taking out trees and lifting the new roof on after the repairs from Hurricane Helene. I've noticed that because of it, some plants are taking advantage of the freshly tilled soil like the Japanese Stiltgrass[^6]. It's really got me to thinking about exactly what is or isn't invasive in a suburban environment though. If anything is invasive, it's us with the blowers, mowers, grass, and chemicals. A weed is pretty much any plant considered undesirable[^7].
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+We had a good chunk of our yard torn up by the equipment taking out trees and lifting the new roof on after the repairs from Hurricane Helene. I've noticed that because of it, some plants are taking advantage of the freshly tilled soil like the Japanese Stiltgrass[^6]. It's really got me to thinking about exactly what is or isn't invasive in a suburban environment though. If anything is invasive, it's us with the blowers, mowers, grass, and chemicals. A weed is pretty much any plant considered undesirable[^7]. We also have a illicium floridanum which smells like dead fish when it's in bloom. It also took me a while to notice because I had just assummed that either the osprey or the blue heron left a fish head down by the pond.
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+<div style={{display: 'flex', justifyContent:'center', alignItems:'center', fontSize:'small', marginBottom:'20px'}}>Illicium floridanum</div>
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With advent of quick and easy to use plant identification using photos and AI, we've started identifying everything. And as we make plans for various projects, we're determining what we call weeds. Because it's just over an acre and I like manually walking the yard, I'm pulling the stiltgrass and some other plants. I'm leaving the pyrocantha though. And after about three hundred episodes of Gardner's World, I'm also starting to change my attitude about landscaping for a sustainable habitat, both in terms of wildlife and maintenance. I've really started to enjoy the variety and less controlled approach. I planted 10lbs of native wildflower in our natural areas and I'm sure our HOA will send me a letter about the so called weeds and I'll be forced to go present to the board and insult their tastes in pine straw heaped upon tree bases surrounded by over-fertilized mowed grasses.
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-There's really a bigger metaphor to this and I can most easily point at the current approach to immigration. Who really belongs where? Is that the question? It just seems that some of the native species are threatened for whatever reason. I'm leaning more and more towards a balance desperately trying to make the planting appear as if they're natural. If anything has been bad for the habitat, then we're really the weeds. I won't be using the metephor, but I will post the HOA letter here when I get it and make a 30+ slide presentation on landscaping for the board of directors.
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+There's really a bigger metaphor to this and I can most easily point at the current approach to immigration. Who really belongs where? Is that the question? It just seems that some of the native species are threatened for whatever reason. I'm leaning more and more towards a balance desperately trying to make the planting appear as if they're natural. If anything has been bad for the habitat, then we're really the weeds. I won't be using the metephor, but I will post the HOA letter here when I get it and make a 30 slide 30 minute presentation on landscaping for the board of directors.
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<div><br/><br/></div>
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---
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@@ -39,4 +47,5 @@ There's really a bigger metaphor to this and I can most easily point at the curr
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[^5]: Callery Pear - National Invasive Species Information Center - https://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/terrestrial/plants/callery-pear
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[^6]: Japanese Stiltgrass - National Invasive Species Information Center - https://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/terrestrial/plants/japanese-stiltgrass
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[^7]: Weed - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weed
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+[^8]: Illicium floridanum - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illicium_floridanum
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